Malta’s first ‘Your Classroom. Their Future’ a great success
yourclassroom. their future3

More than 160 teachers together with future educators, attended Malta’s first ‘Your Classroom. Their Future’ conference organized by ICE Malta. Teachers from church, private and public schools together with University of Malta’s B.Ed students, visited the Microsoft Innovation Centre for a full day of workshops entirely dedicated to the integration of ICT in the classroom. ‘During our school visits during the last scholastic year, we received a number of requests from teachers who were interested to learn more about ICE Malta’s unique study experience. For the 2013/2014 scholastic year we decided to take our commitment one step further and came up with the idea of hosting a one day workshop dedicated to ICT – we simply wanted to share experiences, resources, inspire the creation of local content for apps and most importantly to listen to educators who are truly the heart and soul of Malta’s education system. The feedback we received was immense and we are pleased to see that educators accepted our invitation and participated’ Nikolai Sammut, director of ICE Malta explained.

‘The Educators Debate’ moderated by Godfrey Vella, Malta’s Digital Champion included a panel of some of the island’s most esteemed professors, academics and industry leaders who put forward a number of ideas regarding how our country is embarking on the integration of ICT in the class, their vision as well as their suggestions to how the tablet should be introduced. Attendees from a number of schools shared their views, concerns and recommendations while Mr Emanuel Zammit, Assistant Director E Learning, was entrusted to forward all points raised during the debate personally, to the Minister of Education and Employment.

During the conference ICE Malta launched ‘The Staff Room’ – a dedicated page on the ICE Malta website which includes all workshop presentations as well as is intended to keep teachers up to date with new resources, ideas and concepts. ‘While we were discussing plans with our esteemed panel participants and key speakers we realized that to truly promote lifelong learning in technology we, as a leading ICT institute, have to invest in teachers’ education as well and therefore extending our 50euro study voucher which we launched last year for Form 4 and Form 5 students to all of Malta’s educators and B.Ed students. In this way, teachers and future educators may enroll for any ICE Malta course, achieve a worldwide recognized certification, keep up to date with all that’s happening in the world of technology and benefit from a 50euro study voucher. We consider this to be part  of our corporate social responsibility – our commitment to ensuring that individuals embark on further ICT studies and to make sure that educators are given the necessary ICT skills to present an enriching creative class with the use of technology.’ Mr Sammut announced.

Educators and University of Malta B.Ed students who are interested to enroll for an ICE Malta course, are requested to send an email to [email protected] with their details including the name of their school or a copy of their student card, and will be contacted by a member of the Admissions team to confirm their study experience at the institute.

The ICE Malta team together with partners Microsoft Innovation Centre and MITA will be organizing a second edition of ‘Your Classroom. Their Future’ for educators who do not manage to book in time or were unavailable. Furthermore a follow up of the first session will be presented to all stakeholders and members of the press in the coming weeks.

Educators are encouraged to contact ICE Malta on [email protected] or 21467 787 with their ideas and feedback. The ICE Malta team would like to wish all teachers and students a successful scholastic year.